Small "cafes" and toilets

mrsormrod

Hi, I was wondering if anyone could help.
My mum is Planning on starting a cake making buisness. She already does this from home in her spare time and her cakes are amazing But demand is getting far too high for her small kitchen and due to redundacy in her full time job she has decided to take it on full time and find a premisis away from home. We have found one that is an old sayers building Which is bigger than she wanted. The plan was just to find a small unit and carry on with her internet sales but this shop is in a great location on a small shopping precinct and would be perfect for her cake making with a shop in the front for a small seating area maybe 3 or 4 tables. She was thinking of doing a cupcake cafe. only selling drinks and cakes for now. if there is a demand maybe do sandwiches. But she wants to focus more on the cakes.
Anyway to the point lol. Can anyone help with regulations on the toilet aspects. I dont think there is room for one in the shop and ive tried googling to find out if she has to have a customer toilet by law but cant find anything other than peoples opinions on whether there should be one or not. Can anyone point me in the right direction of a link?
Thankyou in advance
Mrs O

motorguy

I would personally be very wary of this massive step.

You could very easily get a small unit in an industrial area and probably on a short lease if you have a local enterprise scheme for the baking of the cakes. If this is going well and showing real promise, i would personally focus on that. Start up costs will be relatively low.

IF you go down the small retail unit idea, then you are going to be

• making cakes there
• selling them to customers
• selling them to other businesses
• running a coffee shop
• employing staff

On top of that you will have to make a heavy financial commitment to fit out the retail unit, and make a long term leasing commitment. Also three or four tables isnt going to generate enough revenue

I would get the cake making business up and running in an industrial unit, confirm its viability, THEN look at opening a separate retail unit at a different date.

paulwf

Remember that if you go into retail you have to open set hours, you may end up regretting being stuck at the shop all day on a rainy Tuesday in February which has prevented you from catering for a profitable baby shower. I'm not totally against the idea just as the other Paul says why not get a short term industrial let first to see how the business grows.

Anyway - toilets. You need to speak to the technical officer at the council as it varies from council to council. Some councils take a balanced view and will allow a few tables and chairs before needing toilet facilities, will the exact number at their discretion. Others will take a hard line and allow no tables.

For example my council is bizarre in that I can have unlimited tables and chairs outside, and unlimited chairs inside and a leaner bar. However if one single chair is moved to the leaner bar that makes it a table and I instantly need a disabled toilet. Logic and councils rarely mix.

BTW if you do have tables and chairs inside that might change your usage from takeaway to restaurant so you might need A3 planning consent. It can also alter the VAT status of some food items.

Make sure you think your concept through in depth, the cupcake cafes I have seen have soon ended up diversifying like crazy and losing their core appeal - put simply the demand for tea/coffee with a cupcake is a limited market. Keeping it just retail would keep your equipment and staffing needs much lower and that simplicity could allow you to use it as a base whilst you go off and do weddings, farmers markets, pack internet orders etc.

mrsormrod

Thankyou for both pieces of advice and it helps me prove to mum it will be alot harder work than what i think she can cope with.

FatAndy

Where I live the local council operate a Community Toilet Scheme through which they pay businesses a grant of £500 a year to open their toilets to the public (so the council can start closing down their's). Most of the businesses that have signed up around here are cafes, pubs, etc that would already have toilets available for the public anyway but under this scheme they have to make them available to non-customers as well as customers.

I believe the scheme started in Richmond-upon-Thames and a few councils around the country have since taken it up so it might be worth your mum seeing if she can get some cash of your local council to open a toilet.

Savvy_Sue

I agree that running a cafe makes it a completely different business to a cake making business, and should be approached with great caution.

As far as the toilets go, it might also depend on what other facilities were available close at hand. In a shopping precinct, if they've already got customer toilets, you might not need them in each and every cafe, BUT there are people who would choose a cafe with a toilet over one near a toilet, IYSWIM. When the boys were young, I know I would have done, not that we went to many cafes ...

paulwf

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

As far as the toilets go, it might also depend on what other facilities were available close at hand. In a shopping precinct, if they've already got customer toilets, you might not need them in each and every cafe, BUT there are people who would choose a cafe with a toilet over one near a toilet, IYSWIM. When the boys were young, I know I would have done, not that we went to many cafes ...

Generally units in shopping centres can get around the toilet rule if the centre provides toilets...thats partly what the service charge covers.

Councils have been urged to take a fairly hard line on toilet provisions, simply put they would rather get cafes to provide them for free then have to spend money on their own facilities. The rules were set a long time ago and now look out of date but councils are making full use of them to save themselves money.

Retailers and cafes with toilets do attract customers and those customers may stay longer and spend more money. OTOH food and toilets don't mix, I worked at M&S and their toilets were in the food hall and the smell was rather offputting. Customers trash toilets which costs money and don't treat them with any respect, most cafe work is around min wage but if you're asking staff to clean customer toilets it makes the job a lot less desireable.

casbah

Hi, Has your Mum considered doing shows, i.e Wedding Fayres, Country shows?

I'm guessing that cakes are a specialised area as supermarkets offer such a wide range ( not so good quality IMO) and if your Mum has a specific customer base then wouldn't aiming at them prove more worthwhile?

mrsormrod

Hi yes she is planning on starting to do wedding fayres from this year but they can be costly. She has also been getting recommendations from the wedding coordinator at my place of work which is an added bonus
Thankyou for all your advice. we are waiting for a call back from the council about the premesis and any other available units they have. and have a meeting at the bank next week.

casbah

Good Luck! and remember the best way is personal recommendations, when she quotes for a cake I'd advise her to factor in, the point that she wants to take photos for future brouchures, website etc

laurajayne

I run a cake business already, including classes etc, and I just wanted to come at this from a different angle. I don't mean any disrespect, but I hate to see a fellow caker get burnt out! (If none of this applies, then do please ignore it - but it may also help someone else out there)

You say that she's planning to start the business, but that she's struggling already to supply out of her home kitchen....so has she started the business or not? IF she has, has she already registered with EHO/HMRC etc? Again, if she has, who are her customers? Are they all friends/family or are they outsiders?

I ask because a) there are already some implications if she has started trading, and b) in my experience, if your customers are all friends and family, then you don't have a customer base yet - taking on more responsibility at this point is not a good idea.

Has she properly worked out her prices as well? IT drives me nuts when I see start up cake companies advertise 8" rounds for £25, or cupcakes at 50p each. It smacks of they haven't done their costings correctly. I buy wholesale, and it costs me 50p per cupcake....without adding my labour. As an aside, it really doesn't help when we get cakers saying 'I don't need a big profit....', they're usually the ones out of business after a year, because it's not a get rich quick scheme, and they realise they're paying to make these cakes. Don't forget to add fuel, vehicle depriciation etc to the costings either, it's all the cost of business! This is the reason I started holding starting a cake business course - my students are always shocked that a cake costs so much to start with! If the cakes are underpriced, as soon as she raises it to a decent level, the customers will dry up (and she'll have to add her increased overheads to that too!)

Finally, is she fully prepared for staffing issues? She will have to take on staff - is she sure that it'll be profitable enough for her to do so? (and take on all that extra responsibility as far as PAYE/NI/legislation goes?). She can't possibly bake the cupcakes, make celebration/wedding cakes, do payroll, staff the shop and pick up supplies by herself! And that's not including doing the company accounts (and it's likely that she'll have to register for VAT....a headache in itself when you do it yourself). So that'll be more increased overheads with at least one member of staff, plus probably an accountant. And what happens when a member of staff calls in sick, and she has to go and set up and deliver a wedding cake - the shop can't be closed, as you'll soon loose customers this way.

Really, you need to sit and do her P&L for the past couple of years - see how she's doing now....it might feel like a lot of money's coming in...but is it really!? Has she done a business plan at all - that'll also soon tell you if it's do-able.

I don't want to be all doom and gloom, it's something I want to do eventually! But I'm concerned that it's a pie in the sky idea for now at least.

Could she maybe look at getting an extention to the house, if it's just a matter of space? Or, look at what exactly is causing the space issues - if she needs somewhere to do paperwork, or hold consultations, it might be a better idea to look at office rentals.

I wish her the best of luck though!